A Tale of Two Prosecutors

10 Jul 2011

We are not generally known here to spend a lot of time defending Socialists, but we are in the business of calling things as we see them and to rooting hard to see justice prevail.

Normally when you hear of a prosecutor being the object of scorn it’s a scenario such as the Duke Lacrosse case – where the now disbarred and disgraced District Attorney Mike Nifong was determined to prosecute a case against the players come Hell or high water, regardless of the sketchy evidence at hand. Nifong was obviously swayed by politics and pressure groups to pursue charges and demonize the accused in spite of mounting evidence contradicting the story and credibility of the accuser.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. took the accusation of rape against former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn very seriously as of course he should have. Strauss-Kahn, a member of the Socialist Party in France and, until very recently, thought to be the front-runner in the race to be the next President of France, was arrested, charged and held without bail. The accusations against him were so horrible and the possibility of him fleeing the country was apparently so high that those actions were clearly warranted. Ultimately he was allowed to post millions of dollars in bond and be placed under house arrest.

Suddenly holes began to emerge in the accusers story and extraordinary revelations about her background emerged, and the wheels seem to have came off the case. As the prosecutor’s investigation continues, it seems more and more likely that the evidence in this case may will lead to a dropping of charges and, perhaps, charges against the accuser for filing a false police report.

It would have been pretty easy for Vance to pull a “Nifong” and turn a blind eye, but he hasn’t.

However, going where the facts lead doesn’t seem to be good enough for some activist groups who were excited at the prospect of a case that fits their victimhood narrative so perfectly it’s what they would write if they could write one. The case has everything these groups seek to exploit — class, race and rich vs. poor. That’s why several of them took to the streets of Manhattan today to pressure Vance to pursue the case regardless of what his investigation has discovered.

There are reasons why prosecutors and grand juries exists: to sift through agendas and facts to determine whether a crime may have been committed and charges are worthy of being brought in the first place. And second, to allow unbiased professional legal experts, not political demagogues and other motivated parties to try the case.

Vance has been correct to bring forth information that contradicts the initial narrative because that is where the facts have lead him. This contrary information is not garden variety, blame the victim background noise, but a seminal and catastrophic counter-narrative that goes to the viability of the case.

Vance should be praised, not punished for putting the rule of law before political expediency in such an impressively un-Nifong way. Let’s be honest, in liberal Manhattan, he would face a much smaller backlash than that of Nifong were he to simply push the results of his investigation aside and push forward with a case it’s looking more likely he’d lose. Instead, he appears to be on the verge of (shocker!) upholding his oath of office and putting the facts front and center.

Today’s media hype rally marks the potential Sharptonization of the case, not surprising in NYC. With their battle cry for the accuser to get her “day in court” regardless of factual revelations contradicting her claims, they have backhandedly acknowledged that the legal case is falling apart. As is often the case with left-wing activists when such things happen, they have fallen back to their default strategy of targeting the accused in an all-out attack in the media, creating a circus-type atmosphere in the hope of pressuring public officials to bow to their will. Vance seems committed to his oath, which is clearly driving them nuts.

Simply put, the objective of a trial is not to serve as an emotional catharsis for an accuser. It is for the state to represent the people to determine what happened and to mete out justice. The Duke case never got that far, but its falling apart didn’t didn’t stop Nifong from pushing forward and making untrue public statements without the facts to back them up. The court eventually had to stop it. It should have never gotten that far. Nifong defied his oath.

What some conservatives might find ironic in this case is that it’s a left leaning prosecutor from Manhattan who is following the path of justice where it goes, not leading it where he wants it to go. In this case, Vance appears to be conducting himself in a manner a prosecutor should, which is unfortunately an increasingly rare trait amongst modern day prosecutors.